


A Dangerous Sentimentality

by flamingsword



Series: Vulnerability [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Child Abuse, F/F, False Memories, Femslash February, Finger Sucking, Food Issues, Friends to Lovers, Identity Issues, Manipulation, Minor Bruce Banner/Tony Stark, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Multiamory March, Natasha Needs a Hug, Polyamory, Poor Life Choices, Red Room Trauma Umbrella, STI Risk Taken Seriously By Someone With A Healing Factor, Torture, Very Little Angst Surprisingly, blackpepper - Freeform, loveable assholes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 12:19:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5928103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flamingsword/pseuds/flamingsword
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha’s friendship with Pepper Potts is becoming more intimate than she remembers agreeing to, but as a product of the Red Room, her memory has always been suspect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dangerous Sentimentality

November 29th, 2013  
They’ve been on assignment as normal people in Europe, practically a milk run, picking up intelligence at a dead drop, when Natasha feels the sting of a tranquilizer dart in her upper thigh. She manages to warn Barton before she loses consciousness.

The next thing she remembers, she’s waking up on the sort of bland, tasteful couch Natasha associates with SHIELD safehouses. The intermittent crunching noise above and to her left is Clint. He stops eating some kind of salty snack out of an irritatingly loud bag to wipe his hands on his pants and sets down the laptop he’s monitoring their security feed from.  


**[A I M lucky, shot you. I kill two soldier. One escape. Maybe identify us? You sleep three hour. I talk C & C. We wait new order. You want water?]**

Natasha allows herself to nod slightly, then picks up the small camera bag they had transferred the drop items to. They have three USB sticks and a small bag of cut emeralds, probably intercepted from AIM’s cash flow in this region. If they’re waiting for analytics to come through at a SHIELD safehouse but talking only in sign, then Clint is suspicious that the mission has been compromised. Considering the infrequency with which enemy combatants get the drop on her, Natasha has to take the possibility of being sold out by a third party as a serious concern. She isn’t perfect, but she is good enough at tradecraft to be above most agent’s ability to surprise. Unless ...

**[Wonder if A I M make invisible ray? How we not see three soldier before shot?]**

**[Don’t know. Mad scientist plus all money you can steal?]** His eyes widened gleefully. **[I want power ring!]**

**[Infant. You not need invisible. I *really* not need you invisible.]**

Clint hands her a bottle of water, and as he passes, a bottle of plausibly deniable aspirin appears on the little table next to her. Natasha tries to work up the will to be aggravated over the headache and lethargy of the sedative she’s shaking off, but mostly just wonders what new gadget AIM had invented to make their lives difficult. Stark taking out Aldrich Killian had fractured his organization into pieces, but those pieces were proving difficult to mop up. Clint hands over the laptop to Natasha and wanders between rooms while making the phone call to C&C about the possibility of a new sort of tech being deployed in the field. To be as annoying as possible, he does it while shaking the snack bag into his open mouth between sentences, littering the floor with pieces. This is close enough to their usual routine of him being the injured one to feel comforting under the embarrassing circumstances.

Clint saved her, again. At times like this she keeps waiting to feel something, always watching, suspicious, for the first stirrings of a dangerous sentimentality. Clint eats a chip he finds on the floor of the safehouse. No stirrings occur.

  


* * *

  


It was late Autumn, during the fall of the Soviet Union, when much of the school’s funding had dried up, and Natalia was told that there was not enough food to feed the pets and the people. It would have been cruel to turn the chickens loose to starve on their own, Teacher Yeshov says, so they had to kill the chickens as mercifully as possible. Be quick now, catch your chicken and say your goodbyes, because they must do this all at once. If some of the birds see what is happening to the other birds they would panic and try to escape and might scratch you. But if you were gentle and fast, you would not scare them and they would all die at once with very little pain, as happy a death as any could have in this world. The chickens would twitch after, but they would not feel any more pain.

Natasha caught Anushka, her favorite of the chickens, and petted her feathers with a chubby hand. Teacher Yeshov explained how they must grasp tightly around the neck, then swing the bird up and then down as hard as they could. If they didn’t do it as hard as they could then they would only hurt the chickens, so they must gather their strength up to use all at once. Teacher had the rooster in one hand and started counting backwards from ten. Natalia said goodbye and gathered herself. At one she swung Anushka up so hard that she could feel the crack when she swung her down. Her wings flapped against Natalia’s pants and she twitched for several seconds after. 

Teacher Yeshov had to snap the neck of two girl’s chickens. Both girls received a smack across the ear and a demerit for not following instructions. Some of the girls were sniffling, some had dropped their twitching birds in horror. Teacher made a silencing noise at them. Natasha made herself bite the inside of her mouth to remain calm, determined to stay on his good side. He started talking again, telling them that most of them had done as instructed, and in the future when they were called on to do difficult things, they now knew they could do them. That was as close to praise as Teacher Yeshov ever got.

Natalia tried to feel proud of herself.

  


* * *

  


December 10th, 2013  
"We'll have to parade him in front of the board for ten minutes so they get to see him not making bad decisions. It’s been a bad time of year for him, in the past." Pepper settles herself further into the couch cushions. She rolls each shoulder slowly while taking the pins out of her hair.

Natasha takes the pins from her and places them in a tray on her dressing table. "And the board can't be convinced to give him the day of Howard and Maria Stark's death, and schedule the meeting for the day _after_? I did the research before I took the SI job, some of those people knew the Starks personally."

"Nope. Vultures. Also, a few of them consider this time of year the litmus test for whether Tony will be out of control next year."

"Alright, let's plan. He's been in his workshop for how long now, what has been used to lure him out previously that he'll see coming, and what ethical lines would you like me to not cross to get your boytoy to his meeting in a suit?"

Pepper had kicked off her heels before pouring glasses of white wine for this conversation, and now wiggles her bare feet beggingly near Natasha's knees. Pepper claims her gun calluses and superior grip strength are better than anything available professionally, and as long as Pepper keeps buying her vintages her SHIELD salary could never afford, it’s a trade the spy is willing to make. Natasha wonders sometimes whether there were other trades that could be made, but does not often entertain those thoughts.

Their talk ranges across a broad swath of subjects, from the relative predictability of billionaires to current events to the pervasive presence of art in all walks of life. Natasha loses track of time, but eventually finds the wine bottle empty. 

“There’s another bottle of white in the wine fridge, I’ll get it.” 

The subject winds back around to Tony and the upcoming board meeting. Pepper opens the second sweating bottle while talking over the end-of-year numbers still being down after the Mandarin fiasco and next year’s projections for the stockholders. Tony showing up will save Pepper a week of hassle and a possible dip in stock prices. If Natasha can get him to attend, her reward for pulling off this feat of social engineering is dinner at Per Se and a bottle of Montrachet ‘84. Perhaps, with excess like that, she can let herself relax and make peace with her fractured past for a night. 

She’ll take it.

* * *

  


The first time they were made to punish one another, Nadezhda had tried to run away in the middle of the night. The Matron made them all get out of bed and stand in the snow, and had yelled at them about how much Russia had invested in them, how high an honor it was to be chosen for this program, how letting another person betray the program willfully was just as bad as committing such treachery yourself, and then when the first fingers of dawn crept across the sky she had lined the girls up and made each girl slap the next one, so that they all would wear Nadezhda’s dishonor. As Natalia felt the sharp sting of a slap turn to an ache in the frigid air, she railed at the injustice silently. She was not sure whether to blame the commander, or Nadezhda, or herself for not talking the other girl out of it when they all knew that she was being secretive and withdrawn, perhaps getting ready to do something stupid. 

Next time Natalia would plan ahead for all contingencies. Her loyalty would be above reproach, solving problems before they arose. She widened and tensed her eyes to stop any betraying tears that wanted to flow.

* * *

  


November 30th, 2013  
They’re doing exfiltration from Slovakia to Poland via back roads. Once they get to Krakow they can take the E77 into Warsaw, but for now they are stuck on one lane roads that sometimes have rusting tractors taking up most of the lane. The bucolic pace of life is both soothing and frustrating. The tonal similarities to the language of her childhood when Natasha leans out the window to ask the farmer if they can pass him and the cold weather here in the mountains are reminding her of the lean time of year in Russia. She scans the horizon and the road behind them, but the nostalgia pulls at her.

She misses her grandmother, remembers the washing powder and liniment smell of her, the big jars of kvass fermenting by the kitchen for Demetrius Saturday, and how Natasha had taken over making the rye loaves when the tiny old woman’s joints ached. She had made good blini and told Natasha that she was a good girl. Natasha likes remembering her, even if she’s certain that the kindly old woman was no relation to her and just a Red Room prop to foster false memories, The Grandmother In The Cottage, like something in a book. 

She is probably dead now; no more blini, no more good girl. Natasha continues scanning for threats. 

The Red Room had not been above using people like set pieces in a play, even while training the girls to not think of their lives as stories. Stories were predictable, and anyone who could figure out what story you were telling yourself could use it to manipulate you. Natasha is now one of the best spies in the world, but she has so little in common with the people whose world she lives in that she can’t read most literature without becoming bored and irritated. She liked watching Dog Cops with Clint because it took on the tropes of storytelling deliberately in order to be as ridiculous as possible. Much like Clint, it could see through it’s own bullshit. Natasha valued expressions of self-awareness. 

When their car starts to descend out of the mountains and into warmer temperatures, the memory of her grandmother fades.

  


* * *

  
December 11th, 2013  
The video call is referred though JARVIS the morning after the agreement is made.

“Would you like to be Natalie again this week for the sake of terrifying Paul Robeson? I don’t want to fire him, but Financial has been slow to respond to the last three HR initiatives and I’ve been getting static from him that indicates he’s protecting someone who he respects more than he fears me. Which outfit says, “I’d like to reduce you to a pile of greasy ash,” the Stella McCartney or the Max Mara?” 

“Robeson judges people by their footwear. Go with the Prada boots, which means the Max Mara.”

“My offer to steal you away from SHIELD remains open. If you ever want to retire to a life of luxury, I promise to keep you in the style to which I’d like you to become accustomed.“ 

Natasha could feel her mouth twitching as she answered, “Maybe once being a spy gets boring.”

“Well, It’s a business lunch with him and Stella Freedman, the VP of marketing who came on after you left legal. She’s staying at the Residence Inn Times Square so we’re meeting at Ai Fiori at one.”

“I’m going to train before I meet you. Have JARVIS let me know if anything changes?”

“Of course.”

***

She jogs loops around the perimeter of the gym level, swinging her arms and shoulders until she is warmed up. Once she’s made it back to the edge of the mat she toes off her shoes and begins doing her muay thai forms, progressing to gymnastic tumbling once she starts to tire. Natasha jogs a few more laps as a break before starting to scale the climbing wall. 

Having JARVIS record her performance and compare her form to previous workouts is an efficient use of her time. She hadn’t pictured Stark as the thoughtful sort, but when she had started using the Tower as her New York base instead of keeping a bolthole near the SHIELD base, he had added the subroutines to JARVIS’s programming to make him more useful to her. For once, Natasha thinks that may have been his own idea and not one of Pepper’s. Or maybe it was the AI’s own idea. Natasha tries to keep a certain amount of plausible deniability about the capacity of Stark’s AI. It is growing up in close proximity to Pepper, and she has a certain amount of control over its actions, but it is ultimately the child of Tony Stark, a fate Natasha would not wish on anyone. Natasha tries to be kind during their interactions. 

Stark’s brush with PTSD was enough for him to have picked up on her habit of always knowing where everyone in a room was, which was an unforeseen level of insight coming from him. The last time he invited her to live here, in the wake of the Mandarin incident, she made her stay here conditional on having seen JARVIS’s security and privacy protocols. Surprisingly, Stark let her. He didn’t know she could reproduce much of the code if she wanted to, and she was not inclined to enlighten him about this fact. She has a new appreciation for the tower, now, as the piece of modern art that houses the world's first artificial intelligence, because the cascading flow of information and permissions was both secure and elegant. Both halves of this building are beautiful to her. 

When she is done with the climbing wall, and her muscles have begun to ache pleasantly, Natasha goes over to the barre set along one section of mirrored wall for her stretches. They used to do the same warm ups before ballet practice. Stretching and tumbling, when she was little, running and jumping hurdles later on. Eventually there was combat training. Even though it reminds her of the Red Room, she prefers this method. Beauty should flow from a foundation of strength. 

Natasha remembers being twelve and beginning training in the style of Wing Chun. It must have been very convenient for the philosophy of that martial art to align with the Red Room’s goal of getting them to function invisibly, with no praise or feedback. She has studied the style since leaving, and many of the art’s teachings were not about what they had learned from their instructors. She now prefers the straightforward violence of Muay Thai. It holds no lingering taste of unappreciated artistry. 

Unlike praise, the punishments for any infraction had been swift and certain. There were always two teachers for every class: the instructor, and Matron whose job it was to make sure that no liberties were taken. Everyone was to do their best with a serious mind; they owed the Motherland no less. And if you let your attention wander, then Matron’s walking stick was soon to find the tenderness of your instep. 

If you won the Winter Puzzle or did especially well in a set of lessons there might be a rare treat or a few words of praise, but mostly not. One winter an old man named Karpov came to visit Matron and gave all of them strings of black licorice for no reason. Teacher Yasha had come with the man and stayed behind at the school. He had trained them in wrestling, concealment, shooting, and had been training the most apt pupils in how to follow a target without being noticed. Then one night he disappeared. After that, the training regimen was made harder when the experiments started. Girls would disappear for days and come back unaware of the missing time. That’s when Natalia began having multiple sets of memories. 

Sometimes she remembers ballet practice differently, waiting outside the school for her mother to pick her up after. Days like today she has to search hard for the memories of making piroshki for dinner, of arguing with her father about ballet being a good career choice. When there is nothing to remind her of them, the implanted memories now seem to slip away like water. She wonders if this is what adulthood is like.

***

She walks to Ai Fiori, because this may be December in New York, but she refuses to call anything winter where she can feel all of her extremities without even trying. One last scan from her camel colored suede kitten heels to her matching demure sweater set makes sure that she is ready to play the infiltrator. Entering the restaurant, Natasha checks her coat and scans the restaurant while she is directed toward the Stark Industries table. Pepper’s eyebrows go up in pleased recognition at seeing her making her way towards them. 

“Stella, this is Natalie Rushman from Legal, she’s been working internationally the last few years, and Natalie, this is Stella Freedman who came on after SI France stole you out from under me. She’s been working miracles as the VP of Marketing; the increased brand recognition of Starkphones and consumer electronics - that’s all her. She brought on a lot of artists who work in futurist styles to do in-house advertising and design work for us. And of course, you remember Paul Robeson from Financial.” 

Her tone does not quite imply that the man is a smudge beneath her fashionable boot, but he looks mildly affronted at the obvious dismissal in Pepper’s reintroduction. Natasha takes Pepper’s opening gambit to ingratiate herself with the man who no doubt barely remembers her. She meets his eyes and smiles at the same time as saying his name and touching her own chest. “Paul! So good to see you again!” And now his eyebrows are going up, too. Natasha widens her own eyes very subtly and angles her head into the tiniest nod when he smiles a professional smile, immediately mirroring any change in his posture when she takes the seat across from him. 

She makes small talk and continues subtly working him throughout lunch while the other women discuss the upcoming meeting and plans for next year. Occasionally, when Pepper makes a move that will seem sudden out of the corner of Robeson’s eye she visibly startles slightly and visibly suppresses a worried glance at her favorite CEO, encouraging her boorish companion to join her in being slightly unsettled by Pepper. It will arouse Robeson’s protective instincts over her and should also unconsciously increase his threat estimation of Pepper. 

Pepper pays for lunch and asks Robeson and Freedman if they mind leaving her and Natalie the table to catch up over coffee. Stella smiles widely as she rises and casts her eyes subtly over at the white man to her side. 

“That’s fine. Paul can show me to Stark Tower on his way back to Financial. You two have a productive day.” She motioned to him to lead the way, and winked at Pepper when his back was turned before walking away. 

“Hmm. I may not have been as subtle as I thought I was being.” She motioned for the waiter and tapped the table. 

“Robeson didn’t catch it, so you were subtle enough for him. It will take me one, possibly two days to contrive enough excuses to hang around Financial to figure out who he’s defending against change and how to handle it.” She stopped talking as a painfully earnest looking waiter came up to their table and asked what more he could do for them.

“A pot of the Blue Forest coffee and the almond brioche, please. Natalie, do you want any truffles?”

“You’re already paying me for this week, you don’t have to do that.” Pepper rests her fingers lightly on the back of Natasha’s hand and smiles indulgently at her.

“Maybe I do. Four of the truffles and a bag to take home the two she won’t eat right now. Put this on my charge account. That will be all.” She leaves her hand on Natasha’s wrist, using the other to pass over a slim, black card. 

When she looks back to Pepper, Pepper’s eyes are waiting for her. 

“Let me take you out. Le Bernardin - tasting menu tomorrow night, I have a table for two. You know how Tony is about seafood, don’t make me sit through polite acceptance of some of the best food in the country.” Pepper smiles at her gently through her lashes. “Come enjoy it with me.”

If this were the Red Room, Pepper’s obvious display of affection would be a trap with something more subtle used as bait. This is not the Red Room. If Pepper wants something from her, she’ll ask, they’ll negotiate. Pepper seems to genuinely enjoy her company, if the recent increase in physical level of affection is to be believed. 

Pepper smiles, seemingly taking her lack of an immediate negative as the assent that it is, and when did she let Pepper get close enough to pick up on her tells? The quality of being known and liked is pleasant but unfamiliar and it chafes to feel so awkward and so powerful all at once.

Natasha has had assignments and seductions, used her skills to create a persona that will integrate into the network of her comrades and allies, but none of her experience has given her this. She has never been in her own skin while building a friendship.

  


* * *

  


Every winter, when there was too much sitting around to be given nothing to do, they were given counterintelligence training. The girls would each see Matron alone and receive a mission. Some were given pieces of information, and they were only supposed to give that information to someone else with another piece of information to trade for it. If enough pieces of information could be collected and put together it would reveal a hidden puzzle and whoever solved the puzzle would win a prize: one day in the city with the school’s Matron, a dessert of their choosing all to themselves, a trip to the library to check out any book they wanted. 

But the hard part was that not everyone was given a piece of information, and none of the girls knew who had pieces of information and who didn’t. And that if you told yours, there was no guarantee that the pieces that anyone told you were really the ones they were given, or weren’t lies made up on the spot. 

Twenty four girls playing spy against each other can think up every kind of cruelty. And even if one could win, could she stand the bitterness of her peers after she won . . . ? By the time that they are twelve, only Yelena and Irina can compete with her in this. By fourteen, only Yelena bothers to try.

Natasha sees the tactic now for its dual purpose: a way to keep them from bonding with each other. A system of control each girl bought into of her own will, and gave up her dreams of friendship to win.

  


* * *

  


December 17th, 2013 

She needs to strike the right balance of vulnerability with defensiveness today in order to convince Stark of her sincerity, physically mirroring his own emotional state back to him. Natasha picks a delicate grey silk shell to layer under the black skirt suit, and tiny grey pearl earrings to match the projected quality of youth that will enhance the suggestion of vulnerability. No watch, no necklace, no cleavage. Nothing that suggests power or control today, no visible sexual power. 

Natasha has grown to respect Tony more since the Battle of New York and her continued exposure to Pepper. She figured out that his understanding of other people is seated in his self-hatred, as though he has disgusted himself every way there is to do so and recognizes the individual flavors of that hatred in others. His observations cut to the quick too accurately to be accidental. He had asked her once if there was anything real about her, and the sudden pain of it startled her into deflecting with less subtlety than she was trained for. It took her seeing him do it to Captain America, whom he obviously idolized as a child, to forgive him for it. Any hint that he was judged untrustworthy was met with defensiveness, and Stark’s defenses were awful humor and compliments so backhanded she’d met friendlier mortal insults. 

Tony Stark had come to accept Natasha to some extent as well, now that her files had been hacked by Jarvis. SHIELD knew they had been hacked before Loki’s orchestrated attack on the helicarrier but were not sure what had been taken. Changes in Stark’s own behavior towards her and Clint in the months after Manhattan had convinced her of his having gotten into the personnel files for the Avenger’s Initiative. Fury didn’t have her full file available anywhere digitally, but there was still sensitive information on the Red Room and her freelance work in those files. She could offer Stark context for information that he already knew which could suggest a similarity between their pasts, if she could get around his extravagant and disagreeable nature. That would have to seem enough like vulnerability. 

Tony will have to feel like he matches wits with her twice before he is outmaneuvered, or he will become resentful and be impossible to pry out. Nothing works when bullshitting a bullshitter like sincerity, so she’s going to have to extend a real olive branch for this one. Tony Stark may be casually cruel, but when offered things he wants, he finds ways of looking magnanimous for taking them. If offered a piece of her past that feels like a connection between them, he will take it because he wants to believe that it is possible for him to be part of a team, if that team’s members are as extraordinary as he thinks of himself. 

She walks into the workshop to see a robot in a Santa hat holding a bottle of Glenfiddich. 

“Spy Hard! To what do I owe the dubious honor of being your Nakatomi Plaza today?”

“I’m doing a favor for Miss Potts.” Natasha heads for the espresso machine and starts pulling shots. If that’s the level of banter Stark can manage right now then he obviously hasn’t slept. 

Tony turns away from a projection of a turbine, and narrows his eyes at her. “What favor would that be? Are you here to be my Christmas Elf? Do I get to play with your taser bracelets, or is there a more _sinister_ reason for you to be in my workshop the day of a meeting I told Pep I was _under no circumstances_ going to attend?”

“Let’s say that I was foolish enough to try to get you to dance attendance on unworthy idiots on a day you had reserved for grinching in your workshop.” She sets two triple shots on the table by Stark’s elbow and wanders toward the little robot, relieving it of its whiskey before doctoring both cups of espresso with a shot. “Is there any particular reason why my motive would have to be sinister, or can Pepper’s welfare be enough of a reason?”

Stark startles for a moment, then immediately shifts to bluster, which means he’s hiding something. Something about Pepper? Interesting. 

“I see you trying to butter me up with caffeine and being all ...” He waves an expressive hand at her. ”Reasonable. But I sincerely doubt that you are capable of having reasons that are free of sinister intentions. Don’t think I don’t know about your little wine and dine dates with my girlfriend, From Russia With Buzz.”

“You mean the times when I come over to your apartment, drink your wine with your girlfriend, presumably with your knowledge, since that’s how security in the penthouse works? One of said times during which Pepper and I discussed how it would not kill you for you to show up for ten minutes even though someone had the poor taste to schedule a shareholders meeting today?” She raised an eyebrow, her expectations, and her mug of high-octane jet fuel toward Stark and waited. 

“Why do you have to do this. You were only pretending to work for Stark Industries to begin with.” He grabbed his mug, raised it in return and downed the brutally strong brew. “ _Which_ you never apologized for, by the way.”

“Working at SI is why I’m friends with Pepper. I’m not going to be sorry for that.” 

Stark’s helpless half shrug and refusal to meet her eye means he’s almost ready for the killing blow. 

“You asked me once if there was anything about me that was real. The organization I was trained by, as a child, had lessons every day. They started us with ballet. I might have been four. Every year they added another level of physical training. Ballet and running, ballet and gymnastics, wrestling, karate - the year they started us on krav maga we had other lessons immediately after combat training. Spy lessons. How to make your body language passive and boring, how to be invisible, how to seduce a target.”

“Sounds fun. How old were you?”

“Ten or so. Don't interrupt. To make sure we had perfect control of our responses, they kept increasing the difficulty of the training beforehand, so that we were usually in pain while performing.”

“Eventually, we had to pass a test. We were given our pointe shoes and a carpet tack. If we could put the tack into one of our shoes, and since pointe shoes already have some bloodstains that wouldn’t give it away, if we could walk across the room and our instructor couldn’t tell we had a tack in our shoes or where it was, then we had graduated from that class and could proceed to the next set of lessons.” 

“Wow, Red Scare, that is ...”, Tony’s gaze tries to measure her face, but she has put no expression on for him to see. “Fucked up enough to be true. Whadda ya know.”

Natasha pauses, as though thinking. “I know how painful the shoes I’m asking you to put on are, and the price that polished image costs you where no one can see you paying it.” He looks away again. She lets him have a few beats of silence before she continues.

“Go to the shareholder meeting, smile at the board for Pepper, then come up to the common room on my floor. We can pretend we never had this conversation, and that neither of us have feelings.” She lets the left corner of her mouth rise two millimeters. “And then drink vodka until we can’t feel our faces.”

Tony Stark smiles bitterly, but meets her eyes. “I’m still not wearing a suit.”

“You’ve been able to make jeans and a blazer look acceptable before.” 

“Rock it like it’s _1999_?! Hah! When Pep asks I’m telling her that was all you.”

His smile has become less bitter with genuine amusement. She allows herself a small approving smile. “It will have to do.”

  


* * *

  


The maneuvering for food started two years after they stopped being Soviets and were Russians once again. The food is no longer served by the kitchen staff, it is left on a table for pupils and staff to help themselves. Staff, of course, eat first. The cold porridge and congealed sausages are less appealing than before, but Natalia tries to get up earlier, be in line earlier, than all the other girls. 

Sometimes, if there were still girls in bed when they left the dormitories, Yelena and Aksinya would heap their plates with so much food that the other girls would have to choose between not eating enough or leaving nothing for the ones who came latest. It was hard to concentrate well enough to fight if you were hungry, but if you stuffed yourself it slowed you down almost as much. Natalia learned the fine balance required to eat quickly, without fuss, exactly as much as she needed. 

Her estimations were one factor in her survival, when the shots they were being given started to make several of them ill. By the sixth winter, only fourteen girls remained. 

It took Natasha years to realize that it was all probably a test, carefully planned, each trial layered in lies of expectation and half-truth. They were experimented on medically, and that was obvious to resent the Red Room for. When she realized that she was the product of years of behavioral experimentation, it was somehow worse. 

When she escaped Project X and the KGB to work freelance, she had hoped to figure out which memories were real, what her real self was like. But even the inside of her own mind had not been safe from tampering, not from the start.

  


* * *

  


December 12th, 2013  
At Le Bernardin, the crisp white tablecloths and deep brown leather seats are a comfortable elegance that Natasha does not often see outside her roles as the Black Widow. Course after course of white china plates with small servings of fish and sauces and sides are served to them by deft, graceful waitstaff. The veteran standing next to a Toys for Tots donation bin ten yards from the entrance on 5th avenue is Clint, paying off a favor he owed her so she can relax and not scan the street-level, glass-fronted restaurant for threats all night. 

Pepper’s uninhibited conversation between courses and her continuing habit of casually friendly touching is making the evening particularly pleasant.

"What's the most beautiful thing you've seen this week?" The look of anticipation on Pepper's face is adorable. Natasha remains professional about her answer. 

"There's an artist named Michael Zajkov, he makes these eerily lifelike dolls. One of them looks like someone I used to know. It's not supposed to look like any particular person, but this doll looks like an unintentional tribute to one of the girls I knew when I was a child, it’s ... haunting? ... ethereal? I emailed the artist's studio to ask if photo prints or lithographs were available, and if I get them I’ll show them to you. Maybe I can tell you some of the nicer stories about Russia. So that's me. What about you, what's beautiful in the world of Pepper Potts?" 

"Well, I'm having a delightful dinner with lovely companionship, that's always nice. Hmm . . . Other than you being back, there really aren't any highlights to my week. Stark is in the weeds getting ready for year end and my personal life is complicated right now. This is my chance to have something nice for myself." 

The first desert course is brought out, tiny pastries that turn out to be Pear Financiers. Natasha tells Pepper a heavily edited version of the first time she was on assignment in France and fell in love with a country full of patisserie. She finishes the story with a ridiculous thing Phil had said about the future of spying being seduction via baked goods. 

Pepper responds with a ridiculous thing an American news personality said about the future of robotics. 

Natasha finds herself staring at Pepper Potts like her conversation is a magic trick; she can almost work out how it’s done, but it’s so fascinating that she’s not sure she wants to look closer in case it destroys the wonder. She takes so few moments of joy in other people, she thinks, why not leave herself this?

  


* * *

  


December 17th, 2013  
She hadn’t planned on drinking with Tony until this morning. It had been a spur of the moment inspiration, the kind of instinct she listens to, like the urge to take the more concealable weapon or to bring smoke grenades. Specialists in any field get feelings. Sometimes they don’t pan out. Sometimes they save your life. 

When Stark took her offered information as an offer of connection, she hadn’t even finished her story before he was interrupting with a recognition of her suffering. This being Stark, it was carefully couched in sarcasm to not seem too intimate, but that he recognized what she was trying to do before she said so explicitly was emotionally astute, even for him. So she’ll be rewarding him tonight with vodka. 

The layers of security on the tower mean that Natasha can relax here. The fact that JARVIS has instructions to notify her immediately of certain types of security breach mean that she can let her guard down enough to get drunk without turning paranoid. Ever since working for the KGB, she has problems with trying to drink while being unable to turn off the need to always be on guard for threats. She gained a reputation at SHIELD headquarters for being able to sober up at the first hint of trouble. Hypervigilance isn’t fun, but it can be useful. The Tower is the first place where she feels protected enough to really relax.

She usually has one bottle of vodka in her freezer, but since there’s going to be company, she called in a delivery order and promised a fifty dollar tip if they could deliver before six. She had given a moment’s thought to getting mixers, and then remembered who she was drinking with. She now has two bottles of Yamskaya and one of Tovaritch in case Tony likes his vodka less peppery. She smiles at the potential for irony. 

Later that evening, after the shareholders are sufficiently wooed, Tony meets her on her floor. Her living room is on the East-facing side of the tower, and has a small balcony that faces the full moon rising over the dusky river and the shorter buildings of Brooklyn. 

Natasha pours one shot from each of the two cold bottles and explains how the evening is going to go. 

“This is Russian drinking. We will talk about other people’s terrible bullshit, complain about the weather, and we will tell stories full of lies about the things we’ve seen and done. Here, take these two shots and whichever one you like, keep the bottle. The one I like is still in the freezer.” 

While Tony is taking his shots, she gets her Yamskaya from the freezer and continues, “At some level of drunkenness, there will be singing. You are allowed to make fun of my singing voice; you are _not_ allowed to not sing along. I’ll stick with English since I’m being nice today. Under no circumstances is JARVIS allowed to record or transmit evidence of my singing or any other part of tonight. Are the rules of Russian Drinking Night acceptable to you?” 

“Sure, just one thing, Spy Who Loves My Girlfriend: you know Pepper is loving this whole us-getting-along thing. And I’m about to be drunk, and when I’m drunk I say shit and it comes out . . .” the hand not holding a bottle waves around searchingly, ”not the way I mean. I _am_ a self-involved man. I do not _mean_ to be an insulting asshole. So, Pep and I have this thing worked out where when I say something insulting, she tells me that it was insulting, and I apologize, and she explains why it’s insulting like I’m five, and then I usually manage to not do it again. Can we do that? You tell me when I’m being an asshole and me apologizing before I run you out of the tower? Because like I said. Happy Pep. You like her that way, too.” 

“Deal.” 

“I’ll drink to that.” Tony clinks the necks of their bottles together. 

Stark has a limited tolerance since the palladium poisoning, but he drinks half his bottle in the time it takes Natasha to drink a whole one. It’s a more companionate evening than she had been expecting, and afterwards, she feels like she and Tony Stark may even have a fledgling friendship.

Pepper will be overjoyed.

  


* * *

  


December 22nd, 2013  
The AIM technology turns out to be a scanning and projection device paired with a spray that adheres to fabrics and plastics which refracts light from the projector to make the wearer of the spray take on the look of the scanned-in background behind them. SHIELD decides that high-tech urban camouflage is on their agenda, and sets Natasha on a three-man team to extract the scientists responsible for it from the company they keep. She is on her way back to Europe the week of Christmas. 

For the plane ride back to Europe, they’re hitching a ride with a military supply transport into Germany. Meeting up with their third team member is somewhat uncomfortable. Agent Bobbi Morse seems professional enough, but keeps glancing toward Natasha when she has to move awkwardly or doesn’t have all of the information available during the short briefing to familiarize them with each other. Otherwise the flight so far is smooth and boring. Clint waves to get her attention. 

“Black Widow, Ma’am, do you have any nail polish in your fancy spy gear? I’d be much obliged if you’d loan me some.” He drops the wide-eyed Midwesterner act abruptly. “The coating is starting to wear off of my earpieces and it’s pretty irritating.”

“I have Agent Hill’s Niece’s Baby Pictures Pink, Nick Fury’s Eye Patch Black, and Zimnij Soldat Diamond Clear Topcoat. Take your pick.”

Natasha knows better than to wind him up, but what can she say, it’s fun. She doesn’t even bother listening to the first part of his rant, instead looking over at Agent Morse, who is paying them no attention. She is engrossed in the folder of technical specs written years ago by one of the scientists they’re about to kidnap. Natasha has noticed the slow shift in her coworkers attitudes, from open distrust of her to grudging respect, and now to this faith in her that feels like being put on a pedestal. Now that her skill is a known quantity she is not regarded as a person, but as a standard of excellence to be met. It’s as exhausting in it’s own way as being a recent defector. 

“All I’m saying is, from 500 meters away, on a boat? _I’m_ not that good, Nat. Nobody’s that good. I’m not saying you’re crazy! I’m just saying he shot at the same time as a second shooter who had a better sight line on you.” 

“Do you want the clear or not? Because I think you would look very dashing in the pink.”

“Yes, I would. I am the prettiest.”

  


* * *

  


Natalia lay on a wooden platform twenty feet above the forest floor. Her mind was quiet. 

If she listened carefully, the rustle of leaves between breaths of wind whispered the locations of animals as they moved over the forest floor. She waited for a bear to pass by. She had already been useful to the motherland, kept track of the children of foreign businessmen, befriended them and left tracking and listening devices on their possessions. Soon, Matron has said, she would be entrusted with missions of more importance. But at that moment, the school needed meat, and deer were plentiful that season. 

She had scrubbed down with baking soda and was wearing clothing that had been washed in unscented soap and dried outside. She smelled as much like the forest as she could contrive to. She could hardly be seen from the forest floor up here, but she could be smelled. She was determined to be the first to bring in a deer this season, now that Instructor Yasha was gone. He had taught them to not take pleasure merely in the kill, but in the clean kill. If you could drop a buck with a bullet in it's eye, it would be painless and easier to dress the carcass. His perpetually gloved hands had showed them how to skin and take apart deer and small game for transportation back to the school.

He had been upset about something. When he had disappeared, all fourteen girls were taken to a medical facility and had something small implanted behind the navel. If Natalia had money, she’d have bet it was a tracking device. Having neither money nor information, she had resolved not to think about it. There were too many possible explanations, each more worrying than the last, and none in her power to fix. 

Natalia folded into herself like Yasha taught them. She let go of her loud thoughts and let herself become part of the forest’s quiet. She could wait for hours that way, with perfect clarity, waiting for a deer to wander across the sights of her rifle.

  


* * *

  


December 23rd, 2013  
Morse continues to prepare for mission objectives as though she may be asked to solo this mission, and when Natasha asks her what the play is, as their handler, her familiarity with their skill sets is professional but still not quite smooth. Natasha misses Coulson, though it does her no good to think of it. 

“Okay, of the two targets, the one who lives in Bratislava has gone home for the holidays to a small town in the mountains. Extracting her will have to wait until she returns to more heavily populated areas; I don’t think we can pass for locals in a town that small. The target in Vienna, however, has no close family and celebrates no holidays according to his facebook page.”

“It’s disgusting how careless some people take working for clandestine organizations. I fought aliens on the streets of one of the most densely populated cities in the world and didn’t let my face make it onto YouTube. It’s like these guys aren’t even _trying_ to keep a low profile!” 

You could build a skyscraper on Natasha’s perfectly level tone when she says,“Vy yarkim primerom dlya vsekh nas, Clineka. Letting our enemies give themselves up is less work for us. You usually don’t complain about that.” 

By the next morning, Command and Control has tracked the geotags from pictures taken on his smartphone and created a three block radius of probable locations for the AIM light projection camouflage laboratory. The air where she is waiting behind a closed vending stall is frigid and tastes like distant woodsmoke despite being in the business district. She waits until Barton’s voice is in her ear telling her where he’s spotted person-sized visual anomalies. “And this is why an ounce of sniper . . .” There are two soft pops over her earpiece. “ . . . is worth a pound of suppressing fire. No movement in visual range. Widow you are clear to proceed.” 

She proceeds. It’s a lot easier to see the camouflaged shapes with the neat entry wounds visible where their heads must be and the street sprayed with brains and blood and bone fragments beneath them. They’ll leave the projector running for now to make their crime scene less obvious, and take it with them when it’s time to leave. 

Natasha swipes her password cracker on the door scanner of the building the dead men appeared to be guarding and goes to work disabling the guards inside. The one at the guard station just inside the door is asleep. Natasha handcuffs him to his chair with his own handcuffs without waking him. He smells hungover. If they need information, he’s already put himself in a susceptible state for her. She locates a second guard on the video feed coming into the guard station and tells the other agent that she’s clear to enter the building and secure the first prisoner. When the second guard is about to come back to the front, she has a Widow’s Bite positioned in the middle of the walkway. She sets it off as he’s about to step over it, then clotheslines him across the neck to make sure he stays down while she secures him. She starts sweeping the building, finally finding Doctor Inquart returning from the men’s room she was about to check.

He blinks owlishly at her. She keeps her body language open and passive and holds the second Widow’s Bite out to him, and when he takes it from her to peer at curiously, she activates it. He’ll only be unconscious for a few minutes at most, so she takes everything off of him and checks the lining of his clothes and glasses for hidden wires before securing him with zip ties. Something about the fine bones of his hands reminds her of something. Natasha has a sudden flashback to the taste of dry white wine and Pepper’s finger stroking the back of her hand at Ai Fiori. But now is not the time to think about that.

“Hawkeye, Mockingbird: I have the package. I will be ready to extract in two minutes.” 

She slings the slender man, now beginning to twitch, over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and takes him back down to the front desk, where Agent Morse has wheeled the sleeping guard out from behind the desk and put him next to the no longer stunned unconscious security guard. It has been a while since she’s seen such an unprofessional display of collective incompetence, but maybe AIM are finally running out of the brains behind their operational security. Maybe they’ve taken enough heavy losses both financially and emotionally that their network is finally falling apart. She’ll be sure to let Pepper know. Fury too. 

Clint’s voice is in her ear piece saying that their kidnapping van is waiting outside. Does she want some candy?

Only Clint can make her smile in the middle of an op.

  


* * *

  


Matron says that Natalia has done well. Congratulations. The body of the target she seduced yesterday lies in the courtyard with his neck at an exaggerated, grotesque angle. 

Natalia feels the rising impulse to laugh, but she doesn't know if it will come out heavy with bitterness or light with relief. She stands motionless until she can’t feel either impulse, and then thanks Matron for the opportunity to serve her country. She has graduated from the Red Room.

  


* * *

  


December 27th, 2013  
Per Se is one of the few high-class restaurants in New York to have both a Michelin star and a hamburger on the menu, so the fact that Pepper and Tony have a standing reservation for the last Friday of the month is no surprise. The fact that Pepper has invited her along instead possibly means that Stark and Banner are on a science bender until the new year. 

“The Getty has had some of my paintings on loan when Tony donated the rest of the collection to the Boy Scouts, and we’ll be getting them back in January when the contract runs out.” Pepper hugs herself and looks very pleased. “The Klee! Did you ever get to see the Klee? You’ll love it. I may hide it in your suite so that Tony never tries to give it away again, and I’ll come visit it. You and I can share custody.” 

“And Tony won’t be jealous that we have a painting together?” 

"Tony is weirdly not jealous in relationships but is absolutely jealous of ideological ventures like SpaceX. Like five-years-old, foot stomping jealousy. I made JARVIS record it when Tony heard the news about them achieving geostationary orbit with the SES-8 satellite. I'll send you a copy. He wants Stark Industries to be leading the field of private space exploration _so bad_ , but they got there first. And he's too proud to ask to go in on a joint venture even though he wants to. Bruce and I have been ... I'm talking way too much about Tony." Pepper blushes and drops her eyes. She's nervous. About what?

Natasha looks casually around the room with an easy, reassuring grin. “Other people can be interesting to hear about. And when I have to use what I know to drag him out of his workshop, it’s useful to have a woman on the inside to tell me his dark secrets. Was there actual foot stomping?”

“There was.” Pepper smiles a relieved smile. “Tony has an adorable crush on Bruce, who won't even let him blow anything up. Bruce took him to a Cambodian sandwich shop tonight. Polyamory as an answer to my current relationship troubles is actually working out rather well. I can’t keep up with all of Tony’s ideas, and since Tony and I aren’t always going to be in the same city, Bruce has volunteered to make sure he eats real food when I’m not here. I think they’ll be good together. And it takes the intensity of Tony’s focus off of me, which was getting a little smothering for a while after ... after Killian.” 

Natasha reminds herself that this is not a storybook. She understands what she is being offered, but the kind of romance that people like to hear tales about is a construct of deluded thinking. That kind of love is for children. She knows she isn’t capable of thinking of her life in those terms. She is not sure how to approach this decision.

***

She goes to get the wine while Pepper is putting up their coats. The glass-fronted wine fridge in the penthouse kitchen does indeed have a bottle of 1984 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Montrachet. Natasha feels like a decadent capitalist. She brings the bottle and opener with her. 

Pepper is reclining on the couch, looking satisfied with herself, like Natasha bringing wine from the kitchen is laying a conquered kingdom at her feet. Pepper takes the bottle out of her hands and sets it on the coffee table, then sets her hand on Natasha’s waist. Pepper’s blushing, and her eyes dart away and back to Natasha’s face like Natasha is too bright to look directly at, but Pepper makes herself steady her gaze. Only Natasha’s training allows her to hear the quaver in Pepper’s voice when she asks, “Is this okay?” 

Sometimes she remembers the ballet school, and sometimes the spy school, and sometimes she remembers a childhood in a Moscow suburb with parents she loved but fought with like a normal teenager. She decides for herself what is valid in any given moment.

What is valid, she decides, is Pepper's hand making itself comfortable on her waist. That could be valid; she could be someone who is valid with Pepper. 

She never saves Pepper and Pepper never saves her. Pepper is just this person who is nearby while they're both busy saving other things. They put out other people's fires and make faces at each other over other people's failure to have their lives together. It works. They work. Natasha kisses her. 

None of her possible pasts matter to this present, the slide of glossy lips and smooth tongue, the grip of red hair in delicate hands. She pulls Pepper closer, where she wants her. Pepper’s body is pliant against hers, soft sounds starting to escape her mouth among kisses. Natasha is suddenly hungry, mouth watering for reasons she has mostly had to fake before. 

“Yes. This is what I want.”

***

Natasha clenches her hands in Pepper’s hair, her dress, pulls at the backs of her thighs with enough force to keep her own hands from trembling as she maneuvers them towards the bedroom. Her performance in bed has always _been_ a performance before now. Feeling herself shake with real desire feels uncontrolled, reckless, terrifyingly free. Pepper’s hands have made their way up her shirt and are working at the buttons to get her out of it. Pepper breaks off from kissing her. 

“What do you like, Natasha?”

Her hands guide Pepper’s deft fingers to her nipple, clamping down on it, pressing them slowly harder until she is gasping into Pepper’s mouth. Pepper starts nibbling and adding the edges of her teeth to the kiss, then makes a questioning noise. Natasha’s responding moan is rewarded by a slow bite to her lower lip, dragged between Pepper’s teeth. The other woman’s hunger for her feels like a reward, like having won something she didn’t realize she was competing for. Natasha pulls them both towards the bed as her knees start to shake.

Taking Pepper’s fingers in her mouth, she slides her hands up to freckled shoulders and around to the zipper at the nape of Pepper’s neck. Sliding the tab down, she laves her tongue at the first two fingers. She sucks on the fingers and watches as Pepper’s eyes dilate a tiny bit further. When the dress starts to fall down, she lets her mouth fall open with it. She pulls the dress off Pepper’s arms and follows its path to the ground. Looking up at Pepper in her seamless lingerie, Natasha feels the word “Perfect” fall out of her mouth. It’s not a compliment, but a statement of fact. She kisses Pepper’s knees, removes her shoes, strokes her way back up so she can pull Pepper’s hips to sit on the edge of the bed.

She pulls the drawer next to the bed open. She finds dental dams, gloves and condoms exactly where she expected to. It takes her a minute to find words. “We use protection. Every time.”

And Pepper just nods. They’ll have that conversation some other time. But the fact of being taken at her word without question undoes the last of Natasha’s anxiety. “Pepper,” she whispers. She kisses her mouth again, driven by the urge to get as close as possible, to share this sudden joy in their union. The only perfect thing she has ever made is their uncomplicated friendship, now made into something more. It is hard to kiss someone properly, she discovers, when you can’t stop smiling.

She pushes Pepper into the pillows and echoes the earlier question, “What do _you_ like?”

Natasha’s amazement that she gets to have this lasts until they are both sweaty shipwrecks on Pepper’s enormous bed.

***

In her dreams it's always now. Natasha is laying on the wooden floor after ballet practice in a warm patch of sunlight, listening to Swan Lake repeat. Her mother will be here to pick her up soon, and maybe she will ask her mother how her father proved himself to her. Natasha will earn the love of someone worth being loved by. Someday. The sun reflects off her hair, turning it pale copper.

***

Natasha wakes to a gentle chime and the voice of JARVIS greeting Pepper and herself. He combines their preferred wake-up information organized first to Pepper’s specifications, then hers. Pepper hums, rolls over to kiss her and tells her, “You’re perfect, too, you know that? If you don’t have any important spying to do, I scheduled today so that I could blow it off if I wanted and spend it with you.” 

Natasha finds her face doing something she didn’t tell it to, eyes softening as her lips roll back. “Hey, JARVIS? Are there any tickets left to the matinee showing of Swan Lake at the Met?”

This relationship will complicate things, she knows. But today she is going to enjoy herself. It is a price she is willing to pay.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta [Sandbat](http://archiveofourown.org/users/numb3r5ev3n/pseuds/numb3r5ev3n). She doesn't even go to this fandom. Above and beyond. 
> 
> Because I love you and want you to be happy: a Pear Financiers recipe halfway down the page, after much longwinded (deserved) praise.
> 
> Kvass: a Russian and Ukranian homebrewed carbonated drink. I want to do the thing. 
> 
> Clint is quoting Schlock Mercenary, because wouldn’t you?
> 
> If you are on mobile, what Natasha says in Russian is: “You are a shining example to us all, Clint dear.” It uses the insulting familiar diminutive form of his name. I think it’s very telling that Russian has a form of address specifically for friendly hostility. 
> 
> And if you spotted the Secret Diary of Legolas reference, you have sharp elf-eyes.


End file.
